Did you hear about the woman who bought a single grape with an EBT card? No? Pull up a chair.

The following comes from an email I received last week from a supposed witness to this outlandish purchase. It was not lost on me that the location was a grocery store in Goshen, Ohio. It’s the one state among 50 that every pontificating pundit on the boob tube and elsewhere seems to think will decide who becomes our next president. If that’s the case, then I suggest we hold presidential elections only in that state from now on.

I detected in the email, because I grew up in the city that never sleeps and was raised by parents who taught me to discern and call out BS, the heavy stink of a politically motivated rat.

But I kept on reading, noting that critics of the current president have lambasted him as the “food stamp president.”

According to this “witness,” a woman entered the Ohio store on Sept. 6. She got charged two pennies for the grape. She had the cashier ring up the grape, but also requested $24 cash back. The cashier complied. She then had the clerk toss the grape into the garbage before she walked out with the cash.

“This is not one of those stories that a friend of a friend told a friend — I witnessed this and would love to testify in court to what I saw,” the email states.

“This needs to get out to the public,” the email concludes. “If we don’t get the takers stopped, we are all doomed.”

Has anyone out there received the same email?

Here’s the problem with this. The exact same “witness” account has been linked to stores in other swing states, according to a myth- and rumor-debunking website. The same yarn was linked on the same date to a Publix store in Gainesville, Fla.

GUESS WHAT? NOT LIKELY TRUE

The tale is “probably false,” according to Snopes.com. “(Modern) food stamp programs distribute benefits in the form of credits applied to EBT cards, which beneficiaries use as payment when purchasing food,” it stated.

“These forms of EBT benefits,” the online site explained, “may only be used to purchase food items authorized by the Supplemental National Food Assistance Program. They cannot be used to buy other items, nor can the cardholder obtain money from the card by purchasing inexpensive food items and receiving cash back.”

Now, compared with the flood of political attack ads and smear campaigns this year, this kind of politically inspired falsehood seems trivial, almost comical. But I argue this helps bolster the very real phenomenon of “belief persistence.”

Based on numerous studies over the years, it essentially confirms that people with certain biases will believe something even after the evidence has been discredited or proven false. In journalism, that roughly translates to “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

OBAMA’S RING, TRUMP’S ‘HAIR’

It is not the least surprising that one of every five of the website’s current “hot 25” rumors or urban legends revolve around President Barack Obama or alleged administration decisions or policies.

The biggest whopper right now is the spin surrounding Obama’s wedding ring. The current scuttlebutt is that the gold band bears an Arabic inscription that translates to “There is no God but Allah.”

“Holy Shiite” was my initial response.

Snopes had six experts in the Arabic language analyze detailed photographic images of the ring. All concluded the symbols had no Arabic meaning and also noted that male Muslim faithful are required to wear rings made only of silver, not gold.

Darn. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good … geez, I already pointed this out.

But I do suspect very strongly that Obama and Donald Trump were born and grew up in Kenya as intense soccer rivals. Obama said so on Jay Leno’s show. It rings true.

Proof? There is no reasonable explanation for Trump’s bizarre-looking mane other than some hairy African creature that surreptitiously crept up on The Donald’s noggin and croaked, its carcass dried blond by that hot and arid Kenyan sun and climate.

And don’t tell me otherwise.

Ruben Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@ pioneerpress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @nycrican.

ONLINE

To learn more about the myth-busting Snopes site, go to www.snopes.com.

From smoking crack in a Harlem drug den for a front-page exposé to covering the deaths of 86 people in a Bronx social club fire, Rubén Rosario spent 11 years as a writer for the New York Daily News before joining the Pioneer Press in 1991 as special correspondent and city editor. He launched his award-winning column in 1997. He is by far the loudest writer in the newsroom over the phone.

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